by THE NATIONAL DESK Friday, September 24th 2021

WASHINGTON (SBG) - Ten states owe the federal government $45.6 billion for unemployment funds at an interest rate of 2.3%, according to watchdog group Open the Books. The states missed the Sept. 6 deadline to pay back jobless benefit loans used to fund unemployment benefits during the pandemic.

Some of the ten states had budget surpluses last year, including California and Colorado.

“California, they had a $75 billion budget surplus last year," said Open The Books' Adam Andrzejewski to Jan Jeffcoat on The National Desk. “The case of Colorado is much the same, they ran nearly a $4 billion budget surplus last year, and the American taxpayer bailed out Colorado for an additional $4 billion.”

Andrzejewski claims the unemployment system is rife with fraud.

“There are estimates that up to 50 cents on every dollar of unemployment insurance payment benefit was stolen by criminals and con artists and crime syndicates across the country,” said Andrzejewski.

States like Ohio, Hawaii, Nevada, and West Virginia paid off their debts ahead of the Sept. 6 deadline.

“That's good, they paid off their debt to taxpayers and now they’ve got to cure the systemic problems within their system, so they can do a better job next time of helping people who have real needs,” said Andrzejewski.